Putting the 'ill' back in thriller

Archive for the month “July, 2012”

Let’s face it, there are certain things that all houses should have: bedroom, kitchen, lounge, secret room concealed behind a bookcase. Now obviously not everyone has enough space for a hidden room in their house, others are lucky that their house has a roof. Clearly the secret room hidden behind a bookcase is the domain of the rich. But it has recently come to my attention that some rich people have failed in their duties as rich people.

If you are wealthy and you don’t have a bookcase that conceals a hidden passage or room, then you are going about being wealthy the wrong way. In the interests of society, please donate your wealth to someone who will spend it more wisely.

Like this:

Life is pretty awesome, there is so much neat stuff going on, yet people want to fill it with meaningless stuff and have us do paperwork. Enjoy today, learn something, read something for fun, wonder, laugh, and don’t forget to poke fun at anyone trying to be boring.

Last night I went to see the best band to come out of Canada: The Tea Party. They rocked!

I’ve been a fan since about 1994 and have seen them just about every time they have toured Australia, even managed to see Jeff Martin’s solo concerts on several occasions. Perth is like a second home to The Tea Party, Jeff Martin’s son was actually born in Perth. Jeff, Jeff and Stuart are a great example of what three fantastic musicians can achieve. Did I mention that they rock?

But something was driven home to me last night. When I started going to concerts it was all about seeing the band live. Then digital cameras came in and the response was to confiscate them before you were allowed into the venue. Now it seems that you don’t come to see a band play live, you come to film the concert on your smartphone to upload onto YouTube. Call me a purist but crappy video, and even worse sound recordings, is just not as fun as rocking out to one of your favourite bands (or artists).

During a discussion the other day my favourite authors and books came up as a topic of conversation. Needless to say I listed off writers like Lee Child, Matthew Reilly, Robert Crais, Matt Hilton, etc. Now these people weren’t exactly literary snobs, but they did respond as if I was supposed to list the authors of classic literature and contemporary literature.

Seriously?

Can we all stop pretending that there is something superior about literary fiction. I’ve seen discussions of social problems in crime fiction, fantastic use of literary techniques in horror, exploration of character and humanity in science fiction; all performed with more skill and insight than I have seen in the literary genre.

I have so much admiration for Stephen King. There are few authors who have managed to be as enduring and successful as he has. The Running Man is a great example of his ability to write an enthralling novel outside of his normal genre.

I’m a very late addition to the Stephen King appreciation society. I blame the movie IT. Scared the crap out of me as a kid and made me fear reading King novels. I’m a big boy now so I’ve started to buy up a few of his books (ebooks and DTB)and will be diligently reading them.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of The Punisher. I hadn’t actually read many of the comics until last year and the reason I started was I wanted to make sure I wasn’t treading the same old vigilante ground as a genre defining anti-hero like The Punisher with my own work. Not only was I highly entertained by the Garth Ennis runs of The Punisher and the Punisher Max series, but I can now avoid treading on The Punisher’s territory; something no-one should do!

The problem with The Punisher has been the three terrible movies that have been made. The first starred Dolph Lundgren, enough said. The second starred Thomas Jane and just didn’t work; I blame Travolta and studio cheesiness. The third film starred Ray Stevenson and had all the right elements but managed to mess it up. Now we have a fan film starring Thomas Jane that bleeds awesome!

I for one would love to see a Punisher film that hits the mark. Either Jane or Stevenson would be suitable and clearly Jane is interested in reprising the role. So Hollywood: can you not mess it up this time?

I’m about to start rewrites on my first novel – Overturned Stones – after receiving feedback from a few people. The feedback has been very positive and it appears that even people who wouldn’t normally read thrillers loved the book.

Of course there are changes needed. A first draft always needs a second draft. One thing that a reviewer didn’t like was my disclaimer. Obviously I wrote the disclaimer below when I had intended to self-publish the novel. I’ve since reassessed that idea, thinking that my novel would fit in with what publishers are looking for, so I might as well see if they are interested. Anyway, the reviewer didn’t think I was taking the disclaimer seriously enough:

I’d like to point out that this work is entirely fictional. Where possible I have tried to be as vague and inaccurate as possible so as not to have anything I’ve written be misconstrued as being related to any person or organisation that exists in reality land. If I have inexplicably managed to use a real person’s or organisation’s name or allusions that would suggest it could be them, then it was entirely unintentional and I hope that you get over it. If I have offended you, or anyone you know, with my written word, you can send a stamped self-addressed envelope to me and I will send, via return mail, 30 cents for you to call and complain to someone who cares.

As the recent Oatmeal debacle shows, some people, mainly lawyers, take things far too seriously. The fact that we need disclaimers for fictional work, let alone that they are serious, shows that people have very thin skins. Obviously we have people, like Michael Crichton, who blithely ignore Wheaton’s Law and hide behind the label of fiction to be insulting to real people and organisations. But those people are jerks, we’re meant to ignore them. The rest of the time we need to have a sense of humour and enjoy fiction, especially since it isn’t real.

There is something really great about Lee Child’s novels. There is also something about Jack Reacher that we all just know Tom Cruise is not going to be able to deliver on screen.

The last book I read took me 10 days to read. That is a long time for a thriller. This one took me 2 days to read. Clearly Lee serves up a more engaging and involving story, a novel that I will actually make excuses to stay up and read, rather than check my email and go to bed.

It will be interesting to see how Tom Cruise and Hollywood adapt this story for the big screen. This isn’t the sort of plot that would be easy to adapt unless you left half of it out. Not that I would accuse Hollywood of butchering just about every book to movie project they have every done. Never.

Read this one before Cruise brings his step-ladder and this novel to the big screen in December.

This is the second Crichton thriller I have read and the second time I have come away noticing his anti-science rants and preachy tone. This time the anti-science diatribe was delivered by the character of Malcolm, who only seems to be in the book for his chapter long anti-science rant. I’ve heard Crichton is even worse with this novel State of Fear.

The book itself is a decent techno-thriller. It was enjoyable and moved along swiftly. One thing I did notice, though, was a tendency to weigh the story down with details. I didn’t really need to know what lines of computer code came up on the screen unless it was relevant – it wasn’t. I didn’t really need to see the DNA sequence typed out.

So you can see that I was less than impressed with Crichton again. The book was entertaining, but from this scientist’s point of view, Crichton should have spent more time writing and less time preaching.

Also, before anyone comments, yes, I am aware that this is fiction. The perils of scientific meddling have always been the cornerstone of sci-fi and techno-thrillers. There is a difference between the “what if” fictional supposition and the “look at my reference list and opinions spouted as facts” tact Crichton uses. Fiction is meant to be fun, not didactic.

I enjoy blogging. Those little thoughts that pop into my mind find a home here, the funny pictures and interesting tidbits I steal repost join them. Hopefully this entertains you as much as it does me.

Right What You No has run since February last year, and found a new home in February this year on TysonAdams.com. A few hundred posts and a few thousand visitors later, I thought I’d update you on a few stats for the site.

The USA are heading to the Olympics with a solid turn-out on TysonAdams.com, tallying 44% of the readers. My home nation, the Aussies, are next with 15%, with the UK, Canada and India rounding out the top 5. So 75% of the readers come from the top 5 countries, but that last 15% represents such a diverse range of people from around the world, clearly we’re all awesome – especially the 628 followers.

To express this clearly I’ve graphed the level of awesome of TysonAdams.com readers in nano Fonzies. The term nano means billionth, as in a decimal place followed by 9 zeroes. NanoFonzies are a measure of awesome, the number being so small due to the fact that a full Fonzy would actually cause the internet to collapse in on itself from the sheer weight of awesome. You can see in the graph below that over time the level of awesome has increased and reached an all time high in June 2012.

I hope you enjoy TysonAdams.com into the future so that we can continue to share the awesome.

As any Lee Child and Jack Reacher fan knows by now, Tom Cruise is bringing the book One Shot to the big screen. What some may not be aware of is that Hollywood has had a few financial issues of late. They’ve had to scale back productions and advertising. Paramount Pictures didn’t want to cut back on advertising or budget for the Reacher film, so they halved the size of the main character – Jack Reacher 6’5″ 220-250lbs, Tom Cruise 5’7″ 147lbs.

The good news is that Reacher has been bumped up the release schedule and will be coming out in cinemas in December. This should be great for Lee Child fans, especially as A Wanted Man, the new Reacher novel, will have been released a month prior.

Lets hope that they film Cruise from some very low angles, because I want to see Reacher kick some ass!